Man Accused of Homicide, Beating, and Robbery

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A 23-year-old Long Pond man was brought back to the Poconos from New York Tuesday to face homicide, robbery and other charges.

William McRae was arraigned on a slew of charges and jailed in Monroe County without bail.

Investigators said in the summer, William McRae and his friend Brandon Fraser got the idea to use Craigslist, an online classified ad website, to lure and rob someone.

Cops said the two used an ad, which read, in part:

"Hi! I'm 18 looking to make some quick cash tonight. I'm an attractive girl. Serious inquiries only please--no time for games."

When a man showed up in the Emerald Lakes Development in Tobyhanna Township at the end of July, expecting to meet the girl from the ad, police said McRae and Fraser beat him with a baseball bat, pistol whipped him, bound his hands with zip ties and robbed him.

People in the area said that kind of crime does not shock them.

"There's so much crime through the internet and people hiding their true identities to do bad things, so. It's sad that it doesn't surprise me, but that's the kind of world we live in," said Harrison Ingemarson of the Scranton area.

"You escape from the city to come up here and get away from crime or whatever, and you think it's laid back community, but actually it's not," said Joseph Womack, who used to live in the Emerald Lakes Development.

One week after the beating, investigators said McRae told a friend Fraser was being careless covering up the crime and "needed to go. "

Police said McRae told a female friend to lure Fraser to an abandoned home while McRae, wearing camouflage, hid in the woods with a gun.

Police said McRae shot and killed Fraser and later ran off to New York where federal marshals found him.

"I was shocked, you know? But like I said, when you're grown and you do what you do, it is what it is. I didn't even know," said McRae's stepfather Luther Coe.

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Earl Turner

Over the last several years, blacks from all over the country have been using Craigslist to set up robbery victims. The robbery in this story was unique only because of the sex-for-money lure that was used.